Peach Tree Surprise

Every year I cut back a weed or tree or bush that pokes out a scraggly limb or two from near the corner garage wall through some landscape bushes. Last year the scraggly limb or two had become a dramatic dark leaf compliment to the light green landscape bushes near it, so even though it juts out into the walkway I didn’t cut it back last winter. This year it is even more bushy and beautiful, almost four feet tall.

Then a few days ago, I find a large peach on the cement beneath it. I look beneath the leaves and see peaches hanging from what is evidently a peach tree. I’ve never seen a peach tree with leaves that dark or long. The peach was big and sweet, 8 total on the tree as far as I can see, 5 of the large size.

The next night another big peach dropped. Unaccustomed to having a peach tree right where we walk every day, I didn’t even notice it in the morning until after I’d photoed the tree. It’s captured on the cement in the picture.

Every year the two small peach trees behind the house bloom and then freeze, never a peach. But this one little tree is in a microclimate. The variety appears to be Bonanza.